Tuesday, November 08, 2011

[Update: As it turns out, he ended up getting a suspended sentence as well (2 and a half year sentence suspended for three years, along with a 1,450,000 won fine) at the end of December.]

In a story involving a stakeout, a Canadian English teacher was arrested for mailing himself a 'new kind' of drug and smoking it. The Busan Ilbo broke the story yesterday morning, followed by Yonhap ("Busan prosecutors arrest and charge native speaking instructor with smoking marijuana"). The Maeil Gyeongje cribs a lot from the Busan Ilbo, which has some howlers about the "new kind of drug" the teacher used.

Canadian English instructor arrested and charged for hiding drugs in international mail delivery to schoolCaught smoking new kind [of drug,] hashish

It has been exposed that a foreigner working as a native speaking English instructor at a middle school sent and received a new kind of drug through the international post and smoked it, for which he was arrested and charged.

The violent crimes division of the Busan Prosecutors Office revealed on the 7th that they had arrested an charged S (35), a Canadian, for importing a new kind of drug, hashish, through international mail and smoking it, contravening the Drug Control Law.

Hashish is the amber coloured resin separated from the leaves and flowers of the female marijuana plant and contains 3-4 times more THC than normal marijuana, and so is a more hallucinogenic narcotic. If one becomes addicted, it is known that it can lead to impaired endocrine functioning and mental illness like schizophrenia.

S began working at K middle school in Ulsan's Ulju county at the start of this year and on September 3 at a post office at Vancouver airport sent 29 grams of hashish using a different name in a plastic butter container in a box. The address he wrote on the package was his school's, and on October 21, the package was delivered by postman to the school. Prosecutors explained that after receiving it, he smoked 3.5 grams on two occasions by the Taehwa river and was charged for this.

An official from the Busan prosecutor's office said, "In this case, we were notified by the Busan International Post Office that a packaged assumed to be drugs had been sent to Korea from Canada, and after it was delivered to S we carried out a stakeout and arrested him at the scene where he smoked."

I guess we have to watch out for English teachers smuggling "new kinds" of drugs - how are police supposed to keep up with them when they keep trying to sneak in susbstances no one has ever heard of?! It'd be different if hash were something that has been used for thousands of years, or literary types had been writing about for at least 150 years - but no, it's not! And it's a shame a new drug that is so strong that it causes "mental illness like schizophrenia" is being imported into the country. When will it end?

This goes to show the lengths some will go to to make the connection between more serious drugs and foreign teachers stick (there have been only two reported drug cases this year that sounded for certain to have involved E-2 teachers). Other cases have involved 'former' teachers or Korean American/Canadian teachers. On the bright side, this is the first negative article about foreign teachers in over a month.

And, hopefully this case goes to show that the likelihood of being caught mailing yourself goodies from home is quite high (ahem).

There have been a few other cases which I forgot to post on - I'll do that soon. But first - tomorrow - I'll post Yonhap's response to this case, which is what I've come to expect from a news outlet funded by the Korean government.

Well as little as I like to think about Cullen Thomas, probably should remember that he mailed himself nearly a kilo of hashish, so no definitely not some hip new drug the teachers are poisoning Korea with, just the same old ones.

Wait, the post office 'reported a package suspected of containing drugs' to the police and they didn't think to confiscate the package instead of doing a stakeout? Does this mean I am going to have police staking out my apartment when I order some new tea bags? :P